The Top 25 high school teams headed out for one more day on Clarks Hill Lake to determine the national champion. Slightly cooler and primarily overcast conditions presented the challenge of adjusting throughout the day.

The Strike King Bassmaster High School National Championship is the most coveted high school tournament, and anglers across the country came to give it their best shot. Due to high temperatures this week, anglers were limited to a three-fish limit, which tightened the weights and brought the final weigh-in to a dramatic close.

When the dust settled, a familiar duo remained on top as Rex Reagan and Max Moody completed back-to-back National Championship victories. A 10-pound, 13-ounce final day limit clinched the title with a total of 36 pounds, 11 ounces.

“It’s unreal, I didn’t think it could happen, but it did,” said Reagan. Moody went on to add, “It’s kind of like last year, it hasn’t really set in on me just yet. I’m happy, but still don’t really realize what we’ve done.”

When comparing it to last year’s National Championship victory on Chickamauga Lake, the duo found this year to be tougher. “The reason was there were 40 or 50 boats fishing the same area,” said Reagan. “At Chickamauga we had everything to ourselves.”

The previous victory did give Reagan and Moody more confidence going into this week. “Last year showed us that we could do it, but this one showed everyone who thought last year could have been a fluke that we can do this on another place too,” said Moody.

This week was the first time the sophomores had seen Clarks Hill Lake and were faced with new conditions heading out on the final day. “We were catching them suspended in about 150 foot of water,” said Reagan. “The rain, wind and clouds today definitely hurt them, they don’t like to suspend in the lower light conditions.”

“We used a 5-inch Zoom Winged Fluke and a Hog Farmer Smoke Shad on a 1/4-ounce Queen Tackle jig head,” said Reagan. “The main key of the week was to move faster than everyone else.”

When asked about when they thought they had a shot, Moody said, “When we got our limit, we knew we had a good shot, but we knew going into today that we had a good shot being up 4 ounces from the day before. It really hit us when we were standing in the weigh-in line listening to everyone’s weights.”

On par from the rest of the week, the Pickett County team had all solid average fish in their bag. “It’s been that way all week long, it was consistent in practice, and it was consistent in the tournament,” said Moody. “That’s really all you can ask for is consistency, that’s the way you’re going to do good in a tournament.”

The home lake team of Jack Story and Roper Putnam finished a close second with a three-day total of 35 pounds, 7 ounces. The duo remained extremely consistent, ending both Day 1 and Day 2 in third place.

Being from the Clarks Hill HS Fishing Team, Story and Putnam have spent a lot of time on the 71,000-acre body of water. “The first day of practice we went to the area that ended up being the best area,” said Putnam. “From there, we kind of knew how the tournament was going to go down.”

Story and Putman said they were fishing in the crowd with many of the top contenders. Even with only 25 boats on the water on the final day, the team estimated 15 were still in the prominent area.

“We just couldn’t land the bites,” said Putnam. “We had a big fish every day come off that would have helped a lot, but that’s a part of it.”

“When it’s your time, it’s your time. When you’re on that, you can’t do anything wrong. When it’s not, you do everything wrong.”

Similar to a lot of the top contenders, the duo threw a jig head minnow, specifically a 1/4 and 3/8-ounce Bad Little Shad Head and a 5-inch Winged Fluke. The cloud cover and boat pressure caused for slight adjustments on the final day. “They were a little higher in the water column, so we mixed a fluke in and that lighter minnow played a little more today,” said Putnam.

Even though it got progressively tougher, Story mentions, “We still probably caught 20 keepers. We never caught a kicker, just all solid fish.”

Putnam just graduated high school this year and is headed to Lander University this fall. Story is going into his senior year and has plans to attend Carson Newman University the following year.

Third place went to Caige Bragg, who posted three-fish weights of 11-1, 13-3, and 10-9. The Springville Anglers junior fished solo the entire season and plans to do the same next year. Bragg did catch some of his key fish in the crowd with many of the other top finishers.

“I would start down there early in the morning around the dam, and I’d catch a few and then I had a different spot where I could run and catch one more better fish up the river. Today was a lot tougher, you had to look a lot longer to find them. A couple days ago you could catch a ton of them. Today, I didn’t have a limit until 12:30. The cloud cover along with the fishing pressure spread them out a lot.”

Bragg was concentrating on 25 to 30 feet of water looking for suspended fish both feeding on bait balls and floating by themselves.

Looking down the leaderboard, stacked weights were an understatement to say the least. Besides Reagan and Moody winning by over a pound, 3rd through 14th place were separated by only 15 ounces. All of the top 16 fish averaged over three and a half pounds, while the winners maintained over a four-pound average. Clarks Hill certainly showed out and again proved itself as a solid fishery, especially under hot mid-summer conditions.

Visit Columbia County hosted this event.